After a long career at Barron's, I joined Forbes as San Francisco bureau chief in December 2010. I've been writing about technology and investing for more than 25 years. With the Tech Trade, I've picked up where I left off when I was writing the Tech Trader Daily blog at Barrons.com. When I'm not working, you can find me riding my road bike around the Bay Area hills, managing my fantasy baseball team, rooting for my beloved Phillies and Eagles and hanging out in the Valley with my family. You can follow me on Facebook, on Twitter (@savitz), and on Google+.

For the period, Verizon reported revenue of $30.01 billion, up 5.7% from a year ago, and a bit ahead of the Street at $29.83 billion. Adjusted profits of 38 cents a share, which reflected 7 cents a share in charges relating to costs created by Hurricane Sandy, were well shy of the Street consensus at 50 cents. On a GAAP basis, the company lost $1.48 a share, reflecting “non-cash pension items…and additional non-operational debt retirement and other restructuring items.”

Wireless service revenue was up 8.5% from a year ago. The company had 2.2 million retail net adds, including 2.1 million retail post-paid net adds. Retail post-paid churn was 0.95%. The company finished with 98.2 million total retail connections, including 92.5 million post-paid. The company said it now offers 4G LTE service to more than 273 million people in 476 U.S. markets.

The company noted that consumer wireline revenue was up 4.1%, with 144,000 FiOS Internet net adds to 5.4 million, and 134,000 FiOS video net adds, to 4.7 million.

“Verizon seized growth opportunities in the fourth quarter to cap a year of solid progress across the entire business,” Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said in a statement. “We delivered a total return of 13.2 percent to shareholders in 2012, and we enter 2013 ready to accelerate the momentum we’ve achieved and create significant shareholder value in the years to come.”

VZ this morning is up 51 cents, or 1.2%, to $43.01.

Update: Verizon says on its Q4 conference call that it activated 6.2M iPhones in Q4, or 63% of total smartphone activations. The company had previously disclosed that it activated 9.8 million smartphones in the quarter. The company said about half of the iPhone sales involved the iPhone 5; half were older models.

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